KDE 4.5 - Desktop files

[Duncan]

Bruce Korb posted on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 09:25:31 -0700 as excerpted:

> I have always used a very short right-click menu to select programs I
> use a lot (viz. konsole).  Nope.  Can't do that any more.  Yes, I know
> that everything is configurable, but the "standard menu"
> is not.  You can select or deselect certain things, but you cannot add
> to it.  So, I am sure there is a way, but I do not have hours and hours
> to go exploring featuritis run amok to fix something that used to be
> obvious and easy to do.

Yeah, the "standard menu" (aka the standard desktop context/right-click 
menu, see its about box, which makes things a bit clearer) is a config 
menu, basically, so it's only going to have config entries in it.

FWIW, despite that long explanation you referred to, I had my own, similar 
but not identical issue.  I happen to be a strong keyboard shortcut user, 
and while khotkeys3 allowed one to configure multi-key shortcuts, 
effectively one to launch a submenu, with the second key picking an item 
from the submenu, khotkeys4 scrapped that, and only takes keys a single 
level deep -- tho they can be modified, say shift-F1 or meta-s).

As it happens, I have one of those internet/multimedia keyboards with a 
whole set of extra keys, designed for launching internet search, mail, 
etc, and media playback control (volume, play/pause, mute, etc).  As I had 
khotkeys3 configured, one of those extra inet keys launched in effect, my 
version of your mini-launcher-menu.  Other keys launched the run dialog, 
the regular kmenu, etc, but as I'm sure you understand due to your own use 
and now issue, the mini-launcher got the most use.  The still open kde4 
bug is number 161009, https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161009 .  
According to developer comments there, it's unlikely to be fixed any time 
soon, apparently because some library (which one, qt, kde, other, it 
doesn't say) simply doesn't support "multi-key" hotkeys.

Obviously I found that highly unsatisfactory, and had to come up with my 
own workaround.  In fact, that was one of my big time sinks when I did my 
switch to kde4.  I checked out a number of other hotkey apps, but didn't 
find any of them particularly appealing.  Many didn't have that feature. 
One did, but it would have required learning a whole new scripting 
language just to program it, because that sort of functionality required 
its "advanced" mode, which basically meant you scripted your own setup.

But, it was while investigating that, that I had the key insight that lead 
to the solution I finally adopted.  I realized that what was actually 
happening with khotkeys3 was that it was recognizing the first key, 
finding that it was registered not as a single-key action but as the first 
key in several multi-key actions, then narrowing its search to those 
candidates when it got the second key.  IOW, it was actually treating the 
two keys as two separate actions, one setting the context in which the 
second was interpreted.  I could do the same thing by actually splitting 
it up INTO two separate actions.

And that's what I actually did, too.  I don't claim to be a programmer, 
but I'm a /reasonably/ decent bash scripter (as many people comfortable 
sysadminning their own systems generally become, after awhile, given that 
they often gradually develop a library of scripts and scriptlets that help 
automate the tasks they find themselves doing repeatedly), so the solution 
I came up with still uses khotkeys for the initial trigger, but what it 
does, then, is launch a bash script in a konsole window with a dedicated 
konsole profile (and a dedicated kwin config for it, etc, so it behaves 
rather differently than a standard konsole session).  That bash script 
then reads a config file with a list of second-keys, and the actions they 
trigger, then waits upto 30 seconds for that second key.  If it gets it, 
it matches it to an action and executes that action.  If it doesn't match 
an action, that konsole session simply closes, as it does after 30 seconds 
as well, if a second key isn't forthcoming.

So while khotkeys4 won't take both keys like khotkeys3 did, it'll see the 
first and start my konsole menu script, which reads the second and 
executes the action just as khotkeys3 did on its own.

It's not all that pretty, and it's DEFINITELY a regression from khotkeys3 
functionality, but it works, and what's even better, if KDE decides to 
break hotkeys entirely at some point, as it did the previously working 
multikeys for kde4, there's plenty of other single-key hotkey apps out 
there that can take its place, in turn launching my bash script, possibly 
with minor modifications to work in a terminal window app other than 
konsole if it needs to, as well.  So that's functionality I can and do no 
longer depend on kde to provide -- I had to and did come up with my own 
solution, when kde broke theirs.

But now we get back to your case.  Unfortunately, while the cases have 
definite parallels, mine is primarily a keyboard UI issue and solution, 
while yours is mouse driven, so my solution won't work directly for you.

What I could possibly suggest, tho, but I'm not sure it'll work with 
desktop/activity correspondence (and will work better with 4.5 than 4.4), 
is to set one of the activity mouse actions to switch activity.  Then, 
setup a new activity with a big quick-launch plasmoid as its main 
feature.  That would allow you to quickly switch to that activity and 
select the desired quick-launch item, accomplishing the desired effect 
using only the mouse, as you mentioned.  Have that activity setup with the 
same activity-switch mouse action, and you have a way to switch back to 
the other activity.

Alternatively, and this SHOULD work with desktop/activity correspondence 
set, setup the dashboard as a separate activity, put the quicklaunch 
there.  Then setup edge-actions (in kcontrol, why they call it system 
settings in kde4 when what kde ships for it is mostly user specific kde 
specific settings, I don't know, the kde3 name was more accurate AND more 
googlable) to trigger the dashboard on either an edge or a corner, and 
again, you have a fully mouse-triggered quick-launch. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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